Azure speech to text pricing per hour and per minute
Azure AI Speech charges $0.18 to $0.36 an hour for recorded audio ($0.003 to $0.006 a minute) across 4 options, and $1 an hour for live audio ($0.0167 a minute) with Real-time transcription. A separate free tier (F0) gives 5 audio hours a month of real-time transcription; batch isn't supported on it. Billed per second of audio sent.
Ranked by each vendor's cheapest option at 100 hours a month, Azure AI Speech comes 4th of 12 for recorded audio (tied with OpenAI and Google Cloud) and 9th of 10 for live audio.
Prices for the East US region.
Prices by model
| Model | Audio | Per minute | Per hour |
|---|---|---|---|
| Batch transcription | batch | $0.003 | $0.18 |
| Fast transcription Synchronous transcription of files. | batch | $0.006 | $0.36 |
| MAI Transcribe-1.5 Microsoft's page doesn't say whether MAI Transcribe takes files or live audio; its price list bills MAI Transcribe-2's promotion on a Fast Transcription meter, so we group both with file transcription. | batch | $0.006 | $0.36 |
| LLM Speech Shares Fast Transcription's price and billing code. | batch | $0.006 | $0.36 |
| Real-time transcription | streaming | $0.0167 | $1 |
What 10, 100, 1,000 and 10,000 hours a month cost
| Model | 10 hours | 100 hours | 1,000 hours | 10,000 hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Batch transcription batch | $1.80 $0.18/h | $18 $0.18/h | $180 $0.18/h | $1,800 $0.18/h |
| Fast transcription batch | $3.60 $0.36/h | $36 $0.36/h | $360 $0.36/h | $3,600 $0.36/h |
| MAI Transcribe-1.5 batch | $3.60 $0.36/h | $36 $0.36/h | $360 $0.36/h | $3,600 $0.36/h |
| LLM Speech batch | $3.60 $0.36/h | $36 $0.36/h | $360 $0.36/h | $3,600 $0.36/h |
| Real-time transcription streaming | $10 $1/h | $100 $1/h | $1,000 $1/h | $10,000 $1/h |
Regular prices. One-off credits and promotions aren't counted.
Free tier and credits
- A separate free tier (F0) gives 5 audio hours a month of real-time transcription; batch isn't supported on it.
Billing
- Billed per second of audio sent.
- Prices are for East US and differ by region.
Add-ons
| Feature | Audio | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Speaker diarization | batch | Included Continuous language identification is included too. |
| Speaker diarization | streaming | +$0.30 an hour Per feature: diarization, continuous language identification or pronunciation assessment. |
Volume discounts and commitments
- Monthly commitment tiers for standard speech to text: $1,600 for 2,000 hours, $6,500 for 10,000 hours and $25,000 for 50,000 hours, with overage at $0.80, $0.65 and $0.50 an hour.
Also priced, not ranked
Specialist products and promotion-only prices, kept out of the comparisons:
- MAI Transcribe-2 (batch): $0.0017 a minute ($0.10 an hour) on a promotion until 31 December 2026. Only a promotional price is published; no regular price is listed.
- Custom speech (batch): $0.0038 a minute ($0.225 an hour). Plus $0.0538 an hour per hosted model and $10 per compute hour of training.
- Custom speech (real-time): $0.02 a minute ($1.20 an hour). Plus $0.0538 an hour per hosted model and $10 per compute hour of training.
Quick answers
How much does Azure speech to text cost per hour?
$0.18 to $0.36 an hour for recorded audio, and $1 an hour for live audio, at regular pay-as-you-go prices.
What do 100 hours of audio a month cost on Azure AI Speech?
$18 for recorded audio on Batch transcription, or $100 for live audio on Real-time transcription.
Does Azure AI Speech have a free tier?
A separate free tier (F0) gives 5 audio hours a month of real-time transcription; batch isn't supported on it.
Does Azure AI Speech bill per second?
Billed per second of audio sent.
Is anything cheaper than Azure AI Speech for recorded audio?
Yes: at 100 hours a month, 3 of the 11 other vendors we price cost less: Groq Whisper Large V3 Turbo at $0.04 an hour, Speechmatics Melia 1 at $0.12 an hour and AssemblyAI Universal-2 at $0.15 an hour.
Is anything cheaper than Azure AI Speech for live audio?
Yes: at 100 hours a month, 8 of the 9 other vendors we price cost less: AssemblyAI Universal-Streaming at $0.15 an hour, Speechmatics Linden 1 (voice agents) at $0.20 an hour, ElevenLabs Scribe v2 Realtime at $0.38 an hour and 5 more.
Azure AI Speech against the market: recorded audio
| # | Vendor and option | Per month | Per hour | Per minute |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Groq Whisper Large V3 Turbo | $4 | $0.04 | $0.0007 |
| 2 | Speechmatics Melia 1 | $12 | $0.12 | $0.002 |
| 3 | AssemblyAI Universal-2 | $15 | $0.15 | $0.0025 |
| 4 | OpenAI gpt-4o-mini-transcribe | $18 | $0.18 | $0.003 |
| 4 | Google Cloud V2 dynamic batch | $18 | $0.18 | $0.003 |
| 4 | Azure AI Speech Batch transcription | $18 | $0.18 | $0.003 |
| 7 | Rev AI Reverb (English) | $20 | $0.20 | $0.0033 |
| 8 | ElevenLabs Scribe v2 | $21.01 | $0.21 | $0.0035 |
| 9 | Deepgram Nova-3 Monolingual | $25.80 | $0.258 | $0.0043 |
| 10 | Gemini API Gemini 3.5 Transcribe | $30.60 | $0.306 | $0.0051 |
| 11 | Amazon Transcribe Standard | $36 | $0.36 | $0.006 |
| 12 | Gladia Starter (async) | $61 | $0.61 | $0.0102 |
Azure AI Speech against the market: live audio
| # | Vendor and option | Per month | Per hour | Per minute |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AssemblyAI Universal-Streaming | $15 | $0.15 | $0.0025 |
| 2 | Speechmatics Linden 1 (voice agents) | $20 | $0.20 | $0.0033 |
| 3 | ElevenLabs Scribe v2 Realtime | $38.03 | $0.38 | $0.0063 |
| 4 | Deepgram Nova-3 Monolingual | $46.20 | $0.462 | $0.0077 |
| 5 | Gemini API Gemini 3.5 Transcribe Live | $53.55 | $0.536 | $0.0089 |
| 6 | Amazon Transcribe Standard | $60 | $0.60 | $0.01 |
| 7 | Gladia Starter (real-time) | $75 | $0.75 | $0.0125 |
| 8 | Google Cloud V1 with data logging | $95.04 | $0.95 | $0.0158 |
| 9 | Azure AI Speech Real-time transcription | $100 | $1 | $0.0167 |
| 10 | OpenAI gpt-live-transcribe | $102 | $1.02 | $0.017 |
Price your own monthly hours with the speech-to-text cost calculator, or see the cheapest speech-to-text API.
Head to head: Azure Speech to Text vs Whisper API, Deepgram vs Azure Speech to Text.
Generating speech instead? See Azure text-to-speech pricing.
Sources
Read on 6 October 2026:
- azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/speech/ (headless Chromium with East US picked in the page's own region selector (the default view is Central US, where several rows read N/A))
- prices.azure.com/api/retail/prices (plain HTTP; Microsoft's Retail Prices API, armRegionName eastus, as a cross-check)
Show the quoted text
Speech to Text (per second billing) Standard Transcription Real-time Transcription: $1 per hour Fast Transcription: $0.36 per hour8 MAI Transcribe-2: $0.10 per hour10 MAI Transcribe-1.5: $0.36 per hour Batch Transcription: $0.18 per hour1 LLM Speech Transcription $0.36 per hour Custom Transcription Real-time Transcription: $1.20 per hour Batch Transcription: $0.225 per hour1 Endpoint hosting: $0.0538 per model per hour Custom Speech Training5: $10 per compute hour
azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/speech/
Enhanced add-on features: Continuous Language identification Diarization Pronunciation Assessment (prosody) Real-time: $0.30 per hour per feature
azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/speech/
Real-time speech to text only, Continuous Language Identification and Diarization add-on features included with batch speech to text.
azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/speech/
Speech to text hours are measured as the hours of audio sent to the service, billed in second increments.
azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/speech/
10Limited-time promotional offer till 12/31/2026
azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/speech/
9LLM Speech is currently sharing the same price and SKU ID with Fast Transcription.
azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/speech/
Speech to Text (per second billing) Standard Real-time Transcription: 5 audio hours free per month2
azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/speech/
2Free audio hours for speech to text is shared between Standard and Custom, Batch is not supported.
azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/speech/
Speech to Text Standard $1,600 for 2,000 hours $0.80 per hour $6,500 for 10,000 hours $0.65 per hour $25,000 for 50,000 hours $0.50 per hour
azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/speech/
"meterName": "S1 Speech to Text Batch", "productId"
prices.azure.com/api/retail/prices
"skuName": "Fast Transcription"
prices.azure.com/api/retail/prices
"skuName": "Fast Transcription Promo"
prices.azure.com/api/retail/prices
"meterName": "S1 Speech To Text"
prices.azure.com/api/retail/prices
Prices on this page were checked against the official pricing pages on .